ALL SAINTS DAY

November 2, 2008

St. Augustine Anglican Church

“Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven.”

The Rev. Gerald Parks +

There is great truth in the old adage that, indeed, absence does make the heart grow fonder. Just as being away from home causes “home sickness” sometimes, and not being near those we love for a time causes us to experience the sickly sensation of longing; so too does the separation of one of the faithful from the fellowship of believers lead to a place where the spirit feels unfocussed and unanchored. In a manner of speaking, it is as though we are missing a part or ingredient we must have, without which our lives cannot be fully lived or appreciated. And we miss it.

Such is the way the last two weeks have seemed to me. It is not lost on me that, through an unlikely early diagnosis and its attendant surgery, doctors have extended my life and my years of service to this parish; and also that at virtually the same time, the loan we have prayed for for years to build a church won at least preliminary approval from the bank. Some would see coincidence here – I don’t. I see the steady, logical hand of God in all of it, working in the affairs of men and beginning in us a new chapter of service in a new home. So, though I hated not being with you for two Sundays (it seemed longer!), I am humbled by the knowledge that this too is from God – a sure signal that He is not done with me yet, nor, it seems, with you.

Today we celebrate the feast of All Saints, a time set aside for us to remember those who no longer live among us in the worldly sense, but who have claimed the eternal life promised to all of us by Jesus, when He said, “Rejoice and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven.” (Matt. 5: 12) We all want to claim that reward – at least, some day – but we may not all see ourselves as being “heavenly” material at present. After all, aren’t the Saints in heaven those who have fought and (sometimes) died for the faith, living lives of exceptional piety, we may ask? Aren’t the Saints the extraordinary giants of the faith, those who are superheroes and are full of (well) saintliness? And the answer is yes; there are some of those. But their numbers are miniscule when compared to the vast company of Saints – people like most of us who may not have accomplished great and holy deeds, but have kept the faith in everyday things, common and ordinary Saints who are unknown to the world, but well known to God.

The Beatitudes, which we heard as today’s Gospel (Matt. 5: 1-12) are, in a sense, a listing of those everyday, common Saints, and the circumstances that may sometimes cause them to question their faith. As such, the Beatitudes should certainly not be seen as some kind of catalogue of distinct types of virtue; for they describe humble people of pure heart, everyday people who are persecuted in some way because of their love of righteousness, and their resistance to evil in the world. Also, they tell us of the reward our Lord has for those whose faith doesn’t waver in the face of that persecution, those who remain strong no matter how they are tested. Persecution may take any number of forms, some of it obvious by its physical violence, but most of it obscured by its subtlety. All of it, though, has at its heart the same malicious intent; and that is to intimidate by whatever means, those whom society has deemed unworthy in some way, with the purpose to change them if possible, or, if not, to characterize them as misfits and fools.

Traditional Anglicans understand persecution: we have seen its ugly face close-up and personal. And the fact that we have chosen to stand with the Saints and resist the pressures of those who tempt us, in spite of their ridicule and maliciousness, says more about the power of our Lord’s message to heal and console, than it does about our personal strength or our character. But having done so, we are in a position to understand what the Beatitudes are trying to tell us – that God will lift us up if we let Him and that He will bind up all our hurts and make us whole; and that ultimately we will be one with Him in Glory and one with the multitude of the Saints in Heaven.

Each of us thinks of the Saints in a different way. That is to say that each of us has a list of those we think of as Saints, which is different from everyone else’s. And that is an aspect of All Saints Day that shouldn’t be lost on us, because it is because of this personal remembrance of loved ones who have joined the ranks of the Saints that our Lord’s promise of heaven becomes most real to us. We can no longer see or speak to loved ones who have ended their earthly journey, and that is sad to us. But if we remember our Lord’s words, “Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven,” we can not only rejoice with them, but we can also know that death, no matter how it comes for is, is not to be feared. For those who die in Christ have not ceased to exist in any real sense: they have merely exchanged a temporal existence for eternal life, a life in which there is no fear or pain, only a vision of the Glory of God, forever.

And that too is what All Saints Day is all about. In the Proper Preface for this day we hear that God “hath compassed us about with so great a cloud of witnesses that we, rejoicing in their fellowship, may run with patience the race that is set before us,” and that means that those we love who have disappeared from our sight are not gone from us at all. They are every bit as much alive as they ever were, especially here, as we celebrate the Holy Eucharist. So let us rejoice in their fellowship and be glad in their company, as with them we remember our Lord’s words, “Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven.”